1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer software and, more particularly, to business process integration software.
2. Description of the Related Art
The pervasive connectivity of the Internet and the powerful architecture of the World Wide Web are changing many market conventions and creating a tremendous opportunity for conducting business on the Internet. Digital marketplace business models and the advancement of Web related standards are tearing down walls within and between different business entities and business related software applications. Businesses entities and applications are being integrated at all granularities and at all levels from devices, operating systems, and middleware to directory, data, information, application, and business processes. An emerging challenge presented to businesses operating in this environment relates to business process integration (BPI), which entails the integration of all the facets of inter and intra business operations into a unified structure.
Conventional businesses typically define a multitude of business processes and manage these processes using various disjoint software components. Examples of such business processes include processing of product offerings, purchase orders (PO), sales orders, requests for quotes (RFQ), shipment tracking, receipt confirmation, product support, contracts, and the like. The disjoint software components responsible for the business processes can be contained within legacy systems, numerous non-synchronized databases, one or more backend enterprise information systems (EIS), and other loosely coupled computing systems and/or applications. Accordingly, the business processes of conventional businesses are often a complex amalgamation of automated and manual processes that can be costly to utilize, maintain, and upgrade.
Current solutions to the problem of conducting business within a BPI environment contain numerous shortcomings. One conventional approach has been to generate a customized solution for each business entity. For example, a video chain can implement a unique business process integration solution for a multitude of stores. Entity-specific business solutions, however, can be extremely expensive to construct and maintain. Further, entity-specific solutions can require substantial amounts of time to develop, train, install, and implement.
Another problem with customized solutions is the difficulty in upgrading and modifying the customized software. It can be economically unfeasible for small to moderate sized businesses implementing entity-specific BPI solutions to upgrade their solutions in a timely manner to compete with more generalized solutions. That is, software development, upgrade, training, and maintenance costs for generalized solutions can be spread over a much larger customer base, thereby granting generalized solutions substantial competitive advantages. Since technologies, relating to the Internet and electronic commerce are constantly evolving, businesses that are able to keep pace with technological improvements possess an edge within the electronic marketplace. Accordingly, competition can force businesses utilizing Internet-based tools to continuously evolve their Internet tools or to be overshadowed by competing businesses that are quicker to adapt.